33 of 50

I sending this out a day early because it doesn’t feel right to send it out tomorrow. Back to Mondays next week.

I guess I would have been about seven or eight years old and there had been a certain buzz in the air for a few weeks – The Queen is coming, The Queen is coming. We’d been told that we were going to meet The Queen!

I honestly don’t remember now, why she was coming. I guess probably to open something or some such event, but we’d been told that we were going there to stand in the crowd and meet The Queen. When you’re that age you of course mostly believe everything that an adult tells you – Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy – The Queen is coming, we’re going to meet The Queen.

When the appointed day finally arrived, we were inspected by our classroom teacher, proper school uniform, shoes shined, hair brushed, teeth clean, matching socks, etc. and then packed into a coach and taken to the city. There was a palpable energy on the coach and I remember being told off more than once for making too much noise, I wasn’t the only one of course – excitement like that is contagious.

When we got there we were marshalled to stand on one side of the street and were told that The Queen and Prince Philip would walk down the street and say hello. Both sides of the street were packed with people, lots of children from other schools were present as well as many regular members of the public either intentionally or otherwise caught up in the days events. We were roped back from the road to prevent us surging forward the moment The Queen arrived and were waiting in anticipation, keyed up with the expectation of being told for a couple of weeks – The Queen is coming, The Queen is coming.

Then it started to rain, not hard just a good bit of British drizzle.

Then the Queen arrived, only she wasn’t walking she was in a Royal car which drove slowly down the road. The Queen was sitting on the other side of the car from us, so we saw the back of her head but that was about it. Evidently the rain had been enough to cancel the proposed walkabout and instead she had been driven along the route waving from the car window instead. Because we were on the other side of the road we didn’t even get a wave, I remember at the time feeling gutted.

Although I never got to meet The Queen, she has been the only monarch that I have known for the first fifty of my orbits of the sun. My Mum can remember her father and the coronation, and quite vividly too despite her Alzheimer’s. I guess that I might also be able to say something similar, maybe. If King Charles lives to be the same age as his mother then I’ll be the same age as he is now.

To me The Queen has been quite a constant, I remember her Silver Jubilee quite vividly when there was a tea party for the village kids in the parish hall, and obviously the more recent 50th and 70th celebrations. She has given her life to public service achieved countless things in representing this country and the Commonwealth, and she has done so in such an understated way.

I have no strong feelings either way about the monarchy although I am aware that many do, but I don’t think now is the time or the place for those discussions. It is a time to celebrate a truly great woman, and to mourn her passing in our own ways.

To Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

32 of 50

As kids, my friends and I were blessed with to have lots of space to play. Most of us had relatively large gardens and we all had local woods or open space where we could roam free. To a certain extent we were allowed to free range, within certain parameters set by our parents.

As you’d probably expect for young boys of that time (1970’s) we would climb trees, build dens and reenact out favourite movies; war films, Bond films and Star Wars movies were all deriguour. We were taught to say “no” to strangers (although I don’t remember having cause to) and often had sandwiches and squash with us for our “lunch”, with instructions to be back at a certain time for tea. I don’t ever remember those sandwiches ever actually being eaten at lunchtime, most likely they were forgotten about because we were having too much fun and eaten just before we were due back, or eaten as soon as practical because we were starving.

It wasn’t uncommon for us to come across the local gamekeeper and his assistant, who to be fair was pretty tolerant of us roam the woods. His general approach seemed to be that so long as we stayed away from his pheasant pens he had no problem with us. The threat of joining the jays and magpies on his gibbet was probably enough incentive to not upset him.

As we got older we were allowed to roam further afield. At the time we also had CB radios, this enabled us to play other games and looking back I also suspect now that it enable our parents to monitor what we were up to, although they never said anything at the time.

Nowadays I still occasionally walk in those woods where I played as a child, to my memory little seems to have changed. There’s no longer a pheasant shoot, so the wildlife is different – more what a gamekeeper would probably consider pests or predators – some paths have been allowed to grow over and others established. It’s still a working woodland, although much more mechanised that it was 40+ years ago, but ultimately the products produced remain pretty similar to what was produced all those years ago. It seems as though were some things have changed, many remain the same.

It’s also busier. As a child we’d go all day without seeing anyone, now there are dog walkers, runners and other users spread throughout the wood. My memory for the quiet spots is still pretty good though, so if I want to escape my fellow humans I can normally find a refuge.

When we move house in a few weeks I’ll also be closer to those woods again and able to visit more frequently. It makes me think if it will still be the same in another 40 years (although I probably won’t be around to tell you) but I will be able to see how it changes in the rest of my lifetime I suppose.

Thanks for reading.

31 of 50

The end of an era was how my friend Christian described it this week when I announced that I would be giving up my allotment

As you may know we’re going to be moving house in the not too distant future, and as a result moving out of the area that means I can’t keep the allotment. I could probably keep it for another year, but the house that we hope to be moving to has quite a big garden and that would mean the upkeep of both, and a substantial commute every time I wanted to visit the allotment. So I’ve decided to give it up at the end of October when the new fees are due. This week I started clearing out my shed and tidying up things a little bit for whoever is going to take it on after me.

It is a little bit tinged with sadness as I have had that plot for over 14 years and taken it from a desolate, weed covered patch to something productive that has provided a considerable amount of fruit and veg for our family over those years. It also become a place of solace for me, where I retreated to when I needed to think. It was a place of contemplation and meditation for me, and where I thought about many problems and solved most of them too. I will miss it.

But it is only a stage in my gardening story. I regularly give talks on growing vegetables and other allotment and garden type tales, I like to tell stories. Almost all of these are to complete strangers, so naturally I introduce myself and tell a little of my gardening story.

I started young. Around about three years old.

I was encouraged by my Dad and my Grandad.

I had one of those packets of seeds that you can get for kids that has an assortment of things that are “easy” to grow – carrots, peas, pumpkins, beans – and a patch of ground in my parents garden.

My parents taught me how to plant those seeds, grow the plants and harvest the veg. They also taught me how to save seed, and over time how to grow just about everything.

As I grew older there were times when I didn’t have much space for growing things because I didn’t have a garden as such, but I still managed a grobag with tomatoes here, a pot of herbs on a windowsill there. When I wasn’t able to grow vegetables, I had house plants.

Then in time I took on my allotment. When I took it on, it was a bit neglected and riddled with creeping buttercup. I was told I had three months in which I had to dig over the whole plot and if I could do that then it was mine to keep for as long as I wanted it and looked after it. I managed to do it in two. Working every Saturday and Sunday, hampered by the wettest couple of months I can remember, but by the time I was done, I had my first plants in – runner beans and courgettes and grand plans for the rest of the plot.

Over time I put up a shed – something I wished I had in the first weeks when it was raining and I had nowhere to shelter to drink a coffee. Well the shed was actually the best parts of two sheds put together, and whoever gets the plot after me will inherit that shed, hopefully it will give them shelter in their first months.

I think the allotment has also made me a better cook. When you have a ready supply of fruit and veg you have to learn to deal with gluts (too much of one thing all at the same time), without driving your family to distraction by constantly serving the same meals / veg. So being able to be creative as well as learning how to preserve things, and make jams and chutneys and all sorts of other ways to use what you have when you have it, without necessarily eating it there and then.

So yes it is the end of an era, and almost a third of my lifetime has been occupied with my allotment. I’m looking forward to starting somewhere new, although I’m not looking forward to starting from scratch again quite as much as I did all those years ago when I first took on the plot. I have plans though, things that I wasn’t able to do for practical reasons on the allotment that I think I can do in the new garden. So there’ll be new things to learn as well as using the lessons built up over the years and more vegetables and fruit.

Thanks for reading.

30 of 50

As I mentioned last week Covid finally caught up with me and despite feeling a little better and no longer testing positive I don’t feel like I’m completely back to normal yet.

Inevitably someone asked me if this was the worst illness I’d ever had. Too be honest no it wasn’t, although probably would have been a lot worse if we didn’t have the vaccines, but it ranks up there. The first few days were the worst with cough, temperature and a range of other symptoms, the tail of those symptoms lasted the better part of two weeks. The government is telling people (via it’s app) that after six days you can go back out into the world. After six days I was still testing positive, it took 11 days to get a negative result and even then I was feeling unwell.

As a kid I was always ill (or at least it felt that way). I was a martyr to just about every chest infection, cough or cold that was going. Being mildly asthmatic meant that I also ended up sounding like a congested steam train most of the time.

Doctors used to tell me and my Mum that I would “grow out of it” and largely they were right but that took years and required me to reach adulthood. I missed a lot of school, drank lots of hot Ribena (the modern stuff isn’t a patch on what they made 40+ years ago), dosed on Junior Disprin and occasionally nice pink antibiotic medicine. Read a lot and listened to Radio 2.

The sickest I think I’ve ever been was when I was in my late 20’s when I caught tonsillitis. This was a viral version (although we only worked that out when the antibiotics I was initially given didn’t work) and I can remember having had a sore throat for a week or so before waking up one morning unable to swallow and looking down my throat in the mirror and seeing two golf balls where the back of throat should have been. I had to tough it out, and ended up being off work for over 4 weeks, including missing our staff Christmas party. I was pretty miserable and my memory tells me that although I wasn’t any sicker than I’ve just been with Covid the duration of the illness made it feel like it was worse. It too had quite a long tail of post viral symptoms the same as Covid seems to at the moment.

I’ve had a few trips to hospital, a couple for out-patient appointments and three or four times via Accident and Emergency as a result of accidents, but never been admitted.

I have to say my experience with Covid wasn’t pleasant and I can very easily understand why it has taken so many lives. What I don’t understand is why many governments think it’s over. I certainly don’t want to catch it again, and as that is a possibility I will be continuing to take precautions and where a mask when in crowded places or indoors with others. Whilst this maybe didn’t protect me, I’m pretty sure I was asymptomatic for a couple of days before I realised I was infected so wearing a mask will help protect others if this happens to me again. The new bivalent vaccines sound promising, so there’s hope that we can truly make this endemic and not pretend we have as we are currently doing.

Overall I think I’ve been lucky with my health to date and try not to take it for granted, I’ve had no serious illness and although I still have the asthma, nothing that would be classed as chronic. All in all for 50 years I think I’ve done pretty well, and hope the next 50 go as smoothly.

Thanks for reading.

29 of 50

I’ve had a good dose of Covid this last week, so apologies if this post is a little more incoherent than usual.

For the first time in over 15 years I’m starting to get all of my books on shelves rather than in boxes in the attic.

But this story doesn’t begin here, it starts back about 35 or more years ago. Some of the first modern adult novels (no not those sort!) I read were by authors Alistair Maclean and Dick Francis – crime and thriller writers, I’d already been reading a lot of Arthur Conan Doyle, mostly Sherlock Holmes and these three authors became my “go to” writers when I wanted something new to read. Maclean and Francis were both still alive at this point, so new books were coming about once a year from both.

I started to collect books by these authors and in particular with Maclean and Francis look for First Editions and start a proper collection.

As you’ll be able to see from the photograph I also added Stephen King to the shelves too. However he got a bit weird at one point and I stopped collecting him for a while.

None of them are worth particularly much, but I am pleased to own some of my favourites as First Editions. At the time secondhand bookshops got to learn that I was collecting and would hold copies for me. Ringing to see if I had a particular title or that perhaps the one that they had was in better condition that the one that I had and perhaps I might like to ‘trade-up’.

I enjoyed reading these books, and many I’ve not read for a long time and would probably enjoy rereading today. Indeed I have been doing that with some of the Alistair Maclean’s over the last couple of years.

The last time we moved house many of these went into storage in boxes in our loft. The plan was for them to be there temporarily but ultimately it ended up being a lot longer. Now we’re on the move again and I am determined that they will have shelf space in our new home and not be consigned to the loft as before.

I might even start to fill in some of the gaps, although I doubt it. These are a pleasure to me, and I enjoy reading them, but I have no one to leave them to, so there doesn’t seem much point in spending the money on ‘new’ First Editions. At least not at the moment anyways, other priorities like heating and eating seem like they should rightly take precedence. I am pleased that they will have shelf space though and that I’ll be able to look at them, and perhaps share them as a Zoom or Teams background when I’m on a call.

I’m also pleased to be able to have the space to commit to my Tsundoku and not feel guilty about it or keep tripping over them.

Thanks for reading.

28 of 50

By the time you read this hopefully things will be getting cooler here in the UK. This summer has been hot and dry. Records have been set, weather warnings have been issued and comparisons made to previous hot summers. In particular 1976.

I remember that Summer, I remember it being dry, very dry, rather than the heat although one obviously is related to the other. Comparing 1976 and 2022, the heat was earlier in ‘76 coming in June and July rather that the July and August of ‘22 and the more recent heatwave where records were set and in some cases temperature topped 40°C1. At the moment the current spell of hot weather is more comparable to 1976.

The thing I remember the most is a lot of public places – forests, woodland and heathland – were closed due to the risk of fire. The biggest risk of wildfire was often perceived to be the sun shining and being magnified by discarded glass – bottles were all glass, no plastic back then – rather than now where it’s likely to be someone’s disposable bbq. There were public adverts about it, and most were accepting of the situation. I’m not sure that trying to do the same in 2022 would be received in the same manner it seems more likely that the outraged self-entitlement would prevail. If as predicted a drought order is introduced it will be interesting to see the public reaction. Generally things like hosepipe bans are accepted but what if there are more significant interventions. I guess we’ll have to see, but it does feel like it might prompt some considerable grumbling.

Water was at a premium in ‘76, not unlike it is now, but the population was that much smaller. I remember having a small paddling pool that I’d play in, partly I suspect to cool down and when the pool was emptied it was used to water the garden with. (I can remember my Mum filling it with buckets of water from our waterbutts – we didn’t have an outside tap, and remember hosepipe ban).

I also remember being outside a lot unlike this year. In 2022 when the weather has reached its zenith I have mostly been hiding indoors or in the shade. Fans are the order of the day, blowing hot air around, there was no paddling pool.

Is the comparison between the two years valid? For a one off weather event yes, but 2022 is likely to become closer to the norm for summers in the future. Recent years have seen hot summers and the trend is more towards being hot rather than not. Climate change is driving this, climate is of course not weather. Variability in one off events is weather. 1976 was an unusual weather event, 2022 is also an unusual event but marks a continuing trend in hotter and drier summers. Depending on what the autumn and winter are like we might well still be in drought conditions come the summer of next year. Again this wouldn’t be a first, but it would be significant in terms of how next summer may play out. 2022 is definitely worse than 1976.

In 2068, assuming that global collapse doesn’t happen in the meantime, I don’t think that we’ll be looking back at 2022 comparing the weather in the same way. 40°C might well be a mild summer by then, if we don’t get on top of climate change beforehand. Even if we do temperatures will still have risen to a new summer norm and that is certain to be hotter than now. I doubt I’ll be around to see it though.

It’s nice to enjoy the hot weather, but remember to be careful out there.

Thanks for reading.

27 of 50

When I was a kid there was nothing on television before lunchtime. I don’t mean there wasn’t anything worth watching but there was literally nothing on, no programmes, nothing. Maybe a testcard so you could check that your tv was properly tuned but that was about it. There were only three channels, and the only thing that you might find on in the mornings where programmes for schools or Open University lectures.

News was delivered via the Radio until lunchtime and obviously there was no internet so if you wanted to read any news you bought a paper.

As I got older we got more channels on the telly box, and then early satellite TV. News on the early satellite services was essentially the same news bulletin repeated endlessly until something new happened, normally around half-an-hours worth.

Skip forward to today and we have 24/7 news and in my opinion it’s the worse for it. Supplying a constant stream of news means that there isn’t time to properly prepare a story. If the government puts out a press release it is often repeated verbatim with very little checking of the facts until perhaps later in the day. This means that gaslighting, spreading false stories or just downright lying and getting this out to a wide audience is much easier.

When news was restricted to an evening bulletin and perhaps one later on at night, journalists had time to properly research and write their stories, they weren’t beholden to what they were told by one party, they could actually report on the facts. The same for newspaper stories. There wasn’t the rush to get the story up on the internet before the competition, there was time to write the article for the morning edition. Of course they would still want to get the scoop on their colleagues on other papers, but at least what you read was more likely to be true – at least in the serious papers, stories about well known entertainers eating pet rodents notwithstanding, and papers weren’t owned by proprietors who had ulterior motives in their editorial oversight.

After the internet of course came social media, Twitter and Facebook in particular and the option to go ‘viral’ with your news. It wasn’t always like that of course, when Twitter was new it was quite a nice healthy place to be. There were no smartphones, so tweeting on the go was done by SMS. Granted the functionality was simpler but there were less trolls or people happy to leap to the wrong conclusion and start calling you all sorts of things just because they disagreed.

So what’s next? Who knows, neural news interface perhaps, have the latest news beamed directly into your brain?

In the meantime, I spend less and less time reading the news these days, mostly because I’m not sure that I can trust it and because frankly it’s pretty depressing most of the time. The urge to report on the most shocking seems to override the option to tell a ‘good’ news story. The same with social media.

I admire journalists, it’s not an easy gig and can be one that can cost you your life for reporting on the ‘wrong’ story, or reporting from somewhere inhospitable. There are still plenty of good journalists out there and still some sources that are relatively unbiased, but it is a dwindling pool. We’ve had opportunities for reform in this country but it has never really been very successful, so for now at least choose your news with care.

Thanks for reading.

26 of 50

I had a different post planned for today, I’d even written it but something else came into my head and I just had to write about that instead.

As you may or may not know Bernard Cribbins died this week, he was 93, and one of my childhood heroes. I remember him best from Jackanory, and as the voice of The Wombles.

If you’ve read some of my earlier posts you might also recall that one of his songs is on my Middle Age, Middle of the Road playlist.

I had a few childhood heroes. The ones that stuck, Bernard Cribbins, Kenneth Williams, John Noakes, Tony Hart; are all in one way shape or form children’s TV personalities from the 1970’s / 1980’s. All have passed on, some more recently that others.

The thing is as you reach middle age and beyond in my case, you find those people that you used to look up to and admire, pass away. Some, sadly turn out not to be as wholesome as you thought they were. Ultimately though they all slip from your life. It’s inevitable, as you age so do they and of course they were older than you to start with.

When I look around now, I struggle to pick similar heroes in the same way. I guess maybe you don’t need them when you’re older or perhaps those ones from your childhood are so ingrained in your psyche that you just don’t allow the space for anyone new? Maybe you’re better with the nostalgia and the memories rather than looking for replacements? There are many entertainers I admire but none that perhaps I would go out of my way to watch in the same way as I did my heroes of old. When Bernard Cribbins returned to Doctor Who, it made me want to watch it again.

Anyway I think they’re all gone now.

Thanks for reading.

25 of 50

He was hardcore, army through and through. Guns, helicopters, scout cars.

She was beautiful, long blond hair and frilly dresses.

They were alike in other ways.

It was summer in the late 1970’s and under a kitchen table with a blanket over it, love was blooming.

She’d show him all her different outfits, he’d show her his collection of weapons.

In other rooms in that same house more serious things were happening.

But under the kitchen table, Action Man was about to take Sindy for a ride in his Scout Car.

He figured he could go out the back door, down the steps and up the back garden path. They could have a picnic when they got to the end of the path, on the lawn under the apple trees. Their humans could have orange squash and penguin biscuits.

Ultimately their love would lead to a marriage, but they would be separated when school started again.

In that late 1970’s summer, my Grandad was dying. He was being nursed by my Mum, Grandma and Aunt. My cousin and I were perhaps oblivious to what was going on, we were being indulged and allowed to play. Basically allowed to amuse ourselves, that summer it was all about Action Man for me and Sindy for her. Together their adventures were second to none and only limited by our imaginations. Ultimately Action Man and Sindy married that summer, but that was to be short lived.

To this day we still talk about that summer, we were allowed to ride up and down my Grandma’s front drive on a neighbours pedal go-kart, walk on the golf course, build forts in the woods, and of course play with Sindy and Action Man.

Looking back I think we were being encouraged not to engage with the serious nature of what was going on in my Grandad’s room. I do remember going in to see him one morning and he was surrounded by many different machines and bits of medical paraphernalia. At the time I had no idea what all of these things were, but now with a more adult set of knowledge I could name most of them, and none of them are particularly good news if you’re hooked up to them.

Of course the overriding memories of that time are of fun. I think being allowed to have those good memories of a time that was pretty miserable for the adults is a sign of good parenting. We weren’t (as far as I can remember) lied to about what was going on and ultimately when my Grandad passed away my Mum was quite honest about what had happened – I can still remember her telling me that to this day too. But I think because we were preoccupied with our play, we weren’t asking any awkward questions either.

The Action Man above is that Action Man too. I found him when I was clearing out my parents loft. I suspect my Mum kept him for me to pass on to my kids. That won’t happen and I honestly don’t know what to do with him, his vehicles and weapons. For the time being he’s staying in the trunk I found him in, with the rest of his platoon.

I wonder if Sindy is still around, I’ll have to ask my cousin.

Thanks for reading.

If you’ve been forwarded this post by a friend or clicked on a social media link this is Fifty from Fifty, which is where I am recounting 50 things – memories, stories, musings, missives from my half-century of life, and we are at the halfway point, so from this point forward there will be more stories behind us than in front of us, so please do check out the archive.

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24 of 50

Once again welcome to new subscribers, it’s great to have you here. Please do check out the archives, as this is Fifty from Fifty, which is where I am recounting 50 things – memories, stories, musings, missives from my half-century of life, and we are nearly at the halfway point, so soon there will be more stories behind us than in front of us.

If you’ve been forwarded this post by a friend or clicked on a social media link and like what you read but aren’t a subscriber, then it would be great to add you to the weekly list, simply click on the button below.

In 2015 I became self-employed, after twenty plus years of being someone’s employee. In some ways it’s better working for yourself; in other ways not so much. When I first took the step another self-employed consultant who’d done some work for me, told me that – “It’s all feast or famine” – basically meaning that you’re either working flat out or not at all. Fundamentally there are times that I’d say that adage is true, but also times where you have just enough work to get by, but are wondering whether you have enough to continue being a viable business, next week or next month.

The one thing I don’t have any more is a boss, and I am no longer anyone else’s boss. I miss neither of these things. I’d like to think that I was a good boss to my employees, and beyond just my direct reports, but I guess you’d have to ask them to get an honest assessment. I do however know that I have had bosses that have been both good and bad.

It’s funny, when I started writing this I tried to note down a list of all the bosses or line managers that I’ve had. The outliers were easy to remember, those that were either very good or very bad, those who occupied the centre ground were much harder to remember. There were also some who on the surface appeared to be good, but actually were probably looking more at their own careers than mine.

Some were enablers and promoters, others blockers and idea thieves, some were empowerers and others micromanagers.

I had one who was an outright bully, and ultimately I arrived at the decision to leave the organisation who I worked for because of him.

All of my bosses shaped my own managerial style though. I was determined to be as good or better than my good managers and never to exhibit or behave in the ways that the bad ones did. A pretty good ethos, which served me well.

After seven years being self-employed I’m occasionally asked if I miss being a manager. The short answer is I don’t miss the pay and rations bit – the approving leave requests, signing off on expenses claims and all the other admin tasks that are a necessary part of being a manager. I do however miss the coaching and training elements, empowering and support staff and watching them grow. There are former employees who I see in their careers now that are successful and great managers in their own right and I maybe had a small part in helping to get them where they are and that’s a good thing.

Would I go back? Maybe. Never say never. I’d like it to be for the right reasons though and not because self-employment became a total famine and I had no option. It would be nice for it to be a choice for the right reasons and not because I had to do it.

Thanks for reading.

Next week we hit 25 of 50, the halfway point. I have a post I’ve been saving for a special occasion, an unusual love story from many years ago. Until next week!